Chapter Sixteen
Adrik
Victory hit Adrik like a spark—stupid, childish pride, but enjoyable. It was even better because Hans was looking up at him like he’d done something impressive. Hans swallowed hard.
“Congratulations, winner,” Hans said.
“Thanks. Next time, you can choose the challenge.”
Adrik stepped closer, close enough to hear the ragged gasp of Hans’ breath.
God, he loved the way Hans reacted to him without even trying to hide it.
Adrik pressed him gently back against the wall, heart thudding with a mix of adrenaline and want.
As he leaned in, their mouths met with a hungry heat, sending a jolt through Adrik.
He kissed Hans deeper, letting himself get lost in it for a moment, letting himself want something uncomplicated for once.
He barely noticed Hans’ shirt sliding off his shoulders—just heat, closeness, the rare feeling of being wanted.
Then his phone rang.
The sound cut through everything. Adrik froze, forehead resting against Hans’ for half a second, frustration burning through him. Of course it would happen now.
“Give me a minute,” he muttered, the moment already slipping away as he stepped onto the porch.
He answered in Russian. “Why are you calling me?” His voice came out sharper than he meant—too loud, too raw.
“Important info for you,” Yakov said.
“You found Sergei?” Adrik asked, hope flickering for a second as he lit a cigarette.
“No, it’s about your mother.” A grave tone entered his voice.
Adrik inhaled the smoke and then said, “What about her?”
“She moved back to Russia.”
With a flick of his wrist, Adrik sent the ashes spiraling into the ashtray on the ledge. “Why?”
“She left your father. Big blowup.”
“Over what?”
“You.”
Adrik stopped listening. Yakov kept talking about giving him her new number, but Adrik cut him off. “No.” He hung up before the man could say anything else.
He took a breath, tried to shake off the heaviness settling over him, and returned to the living room.
Hans was dressed again.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m going home.” Hans avoided eye-contact.
“Why?” Adrik followed Hans to the door.
Hans grabbed his jacket without putting it on. “You fucking speak Russian too.”
The words hit hard. Adrik stepped forward, panic rising in his chest. “Don’t go, Hans.”
Hans finally looked at him, and the hurt there made Adrik’s stomach twist. “When you’re ready to tell me who you really are, then call me.”
Hans opened the door and walked out. The door didn’t just close—it gave a soft, hollow thud, the kind that sank into Adrik’s bones instead of echoing in the room.
It was the same sound he remembered from years ago.
On a morning when the front door of his childhood home shut with a soft click as his grandfather stepped out, the air thick with unspoken words, never to return.
No warning. No explanation. Just the same dull, final thud.
His father had told him later, voice flat and cold, his enemies had taken the old man out. That was the end of it. No details. No closure. Just absence.
The familiar sound vibrating through his chest as he stood in his cottage brought Adrik back to that time, and with it, the same certainty he had lost someone.
He needed his grandfather now. Needed someone to talk to. But he had no one. The silence after the door closed pressed in on him, heavy and unforgiving.
Adrik stood there stunned, unable to move. Hans’ absence magnified the stillness. He’d been abandoned before by family who were supposed to stay, but Hans, whose body had been close to him seconds ago, had shown no signs of leaving him. This hurt in a way he wasn’t prepared for.
A tight, splintering pressure spread through Adrik’s chest, the type that made it hard to breathe.
It wasn’t dramatic or loud—just breaking inside him, sharp and certain.
His hands trembled as his thoughts circled one truth he didn’t want to face.
Hans left. He actually left. The thought repeated itself, dull and relentless, until it hollowed him out from the inside.
Something fragile within him shattered—a quiet, painful collapse that left him helpless.
His legs carried him forward, slow and unsteady, as if he were walking through water. He reached the front window and pressed his hand to the cold glass. The chill bit into his palm, grounding him in a way he didn’t want but needed.
Outside, Hans was already halfway down the sidewalk, shoulders hunched, moving fast like he couldn’t get away fast enough. The streetlights cast a pale golden glow on him, making him seem distant and untouchable. A wave of pain seized Adrik’s chest, making it difficult to breathe.
He hadn’t expected this. Not from Hans. Not after the way he’d looked at him, touched him, and kissed him like he meant it.
The tender moment still clung to Adrik’s skin, but now it twisted into a memory he wished he could escape.
A hollow ache spread through him, slow and heavy.
Abandonment wasn’t new to him, but this…
this was different. Sharper. More personal.
Like Hans had taken something valuable from him and walked out the door with it.
His jaw tightened as he watched Hans turn the corner and disappear. The night swallowed him up without hesitation.
Adrik stayed at the window long after Hans had disappeared.
The street was still under the yellow lamps, but inside him everything raced—a pulse behind his ribs, and Hans’ voice urging, “Call me when you’re ready to tell me who you really are.
” He finally stepped back, the cold from the glass lingering on his palm like a bruise.
He could still smell Hans’ cologne in the living room, faint but unmistakable, and it twisted something deep in his gut.
He walked toward the couch on autopilot, each step heavy. The lingering ache in his legs from the wall-sit was nothing compared to the sharp, hollow pain clawing at his insides. He sank down, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together so tightly his knuckles went white.
He replayed the last ten minutes in his head—the kiss, the warmth, the way Hans had leaned into him like he wanted to stay there forever. And then the phone call. The Russian. The look on Hans’ face when he came back into the living room.
Adrik dragged a hand over his face, exhaling shakily. He hadn’t meant to hide anything. He hadn’t meant to scare Hans off. He just… didn’t know how to be fully known by someone. Not without something blowing up.
His mother. His father. His past. All of it tangled together like barbed wire, and Hans had walked straight into it without warning.
He leaned back against the couch, staring at the ceiling. The faint hum of the refrigerator, the soft tick of the heating system, and all the tiny noises that filled the quiet room.
He wasn’t used to this kind of hurt. Physical pain he could handle—he’d lived through worse. But this? This slow sinking in his chest was the ache of something important moving beyond his reach. He didn’t know what to do with that.
He closed his eyes as the memory of Hans’ warmth pressed against him flickered through his mind again—the way Hans had looked at him like he mattered, like he wasn’t just a collection of secrets and sharp edges.
And now he was gone.
Adrik’s jaw clenched. He was angry at himself for letting the moment slip by, for letting the past bleed into something good, and for not knowing how to hold on to someone without scaring them away.
He opened his eyes again, staring at the weights Hans had left on the floor.
It shouldn’t hurt this much.
But it does.
He poured himself a drink, and the clinking of the ice cubes filled the room as he called Yakov.
“Did you pound on my door tonight?”
“What the hell are you talking about? I’m in Russia.”
“Some guy dressed in black pounded on my door for an hour. He didn’t speak English or German.”
“No, but I’ll check with your German security. Don’t leave the house until I find out what’s going on.”
“Thanks.” Adrik ended the call, but he had no intention of staying home alone.
Adrik shrugged into his jacket and stepped out of the cottage, the night air cold enough to bite at his cheeks.
He lit a cigarette as he walked, the flame briefly lighting his fingers before the smoke curled up into the dark.
His boots crunched over the cobblestones, the only sound in the dead stretch between his place and Hans’.
The Seebrise bar sat dark as he passed it, the neon sign dead for the night. Usually there’d be music leaking through the walls, laughter spilling out the door, something alive. Now it just looked tired, like it had given up hours ago. Kind of how he felt.
He kept walking, unsure if the trains were even running this late. Maybe he could ride to Rostock. Maybe he should. The thought drifted in and out, never landing, just circling like everything else in his head.
By the time he reached Hans’ cottage, his cigarette was a stub.
He stopped on the sidewalk, staring at the windows.
All the blinds were down. No light slipped through the cracks.
Hans was probably writing. Adrik wanted to knock, to explain himself, to say “I’m not hiding because I don’t trust you.
” But his hand wouldn’t lift. Something in him tightened, that old instinct whispering about danger, about keeping distance, about staying alive.
He hated that instinct. Hated that it still owned him.
He backed away and kept walking, drifting toward the train station without really deciding to. The Ferris wheel loomed over the square, its lights off, the metal frame ghostly in the dim streetlamps. He stopped beneath it, staring up as if it might give him an answer.
“Dedushka,” he muttered under his breath, feeling stupid and desperate all at once. “What am I supposed to do?”
The silence offered little. Just the wind pushing at his jacket and the faint hum of the empty tracks nearby.
Should he tell Hans the truth? Who he really was? Tell him about the violence he was involved in? He carried the past like a bruise under his skin. Hans might understand. Or he might run. Or worse, he might stay and look at Adrik differently with disappointment that cut deeper than anger.
Adrik shoved his hands into his pockets and stared down the tracks stretching into the dark. He didn’t know which direction to go—toward Hans, toward Rostock, or away from everything entirely. All he knew was he was tired of running, but terrified of stopping.